My Story of Learning English

　　这是我分享的一篇我如何从英语菜鸟长成为英语老师的经历。我的经历和很多中国学生一样，经历了无聊和应试的中学英语教育，那一腔对于英语学习的兴趣已经完全被浇灭。那你到底如何重塑自己对于英语学习的兴趣呢?如何度过你的英语学习的瓶颈期呢?你或许其实和外国人的基本沟通无障碍?但你真的能和外国人去进行有深度的交流吗?希望这篇文章能帮到你。

　　Mind you, if you are looking for shortcuts for learning English, you will be disappointed because I don’t really think there are any. I just want to share my experience of learning English with others. And hopefully, people who are keen to learning English can find something helpful after reading this.

　　Like a lot of Chinese students, I started learning English as soon as I entered secondary school. During the three years in my junior high school, I had learnt nothing other than some basic vocabularies and expressions. Fortunately, I was passionate about learning this foreign language partly because I was good at it which rendered a sense of achievement and partly because it was so new and different from the other subjects. However, the passion didn’t last long. Once I got admitted into senior high school, I could feel my enthusiasm about English learning fading away as time went by. This was mainly because I couldn’t stand being bombarded with boring as well as complicated grammar points every day. All the grammatical terms such as subject, clauses, auxiliary verbs etc. didn’t make any sense to me. Soon, I lost interest in English. Worse still was that deep down I was against having English lessons. As a consequence, my English became very poor, which I didn’t really care at that time as I was so sick of learning English grammar.

　　But, English music reignited my passion to learn this second language. So here is the story. One day I bought an English magazine called “Crazy English” from a bookstore. Accompanying the magazine was a tape which records several English songs and articles collected in the magazine. The moment I listened to the songs recorded in the tape, I fell in love with English music. So I developed the habit of listening to English music whenever I could. Not only did English music make me regain interest in the language but also became my mood booster under the extremely stressful atmosphere due to the intimidating Gaokao. Occasionally, I would also read some interesting articles in the magazine to get to know the culture in which English is embedded. To me, the culture from English-speaking countries was so fascinating that I simply couldn’t resist its charm.

　　Both English music and English culture served as great motivators to my English learning. Therefore, I decided to pick up my English. In order to achieve that goal, of course I did many lots of grammar exercises and reading exercises while in the meantime I kept my habit of listening to English music and reading English magazines. Even though my grades in English tests got improved, I still had no idea about English grammar even after I graduated from my senior high school. Also, I could barely speak English.

　　That said, I still chose English as my major because I believed at least this major was predictable and thus I would not wind up studying weird courses which I didn’t even have the slightest idea. Soon I realized that choosing English as my major was probably not a right decision owning to the fact learning English as a major was completely different from learning it as a hobby.

　　Every term, I had so many English-related subjects, ranging from comprehensive English to business English to linguistics. Honestly, my English at that time was far from ready for me to understand business English let alone the abstract and theoretical linguistics. From an outsider’s perspective, it is probably not bad to study a variety of subjects as this will provide a wide set of possibilities for our future career. As a matter of fact, that in my viewpoint, is not going to get us to anywhere as we are technically good at nothing. Equally sad was that English speaking wasn’t valued as much as it was supposed to on my campus mainly because the traditional methodology of English teaching attaches little importance to oral English. Also, it seemed that the majority of students were still learning English in a quintessentially Chinese way-rote learning. Consequently, students spent a great amount of time memorizing vocabularies as well as doing grammar exercises. Not many a student realized that they had to actually learn to use English in real-life situations.

　　During the first year, I was obedient. I attended all the relevant and irrelevant lectures on time; I handed in my assignments as required. But, unfortunately, at the end of that year, I found out that I was making progress in English at a painfully slow speed. For a short period of time, I was deeply concerned about my future as I was certain that if the condition had continued, I would have wasted the rest three years to get a probably worthless degree.

　　There was this time I got to talk with an English native-speaker. During our conversation, I was sitting there racking my brain to try to come up with anything to talk about. Awkwardly, only a few questions came into my mind. Because of the nervousness, I even had asked a question twice. Anyway, it was the most embarrassing conversation I have ever had with a foreigner. Nevertheless, it invoked my deeper passion for knowing English culture. Aside from that, I determined to make some changes.

　　The first thing I did was watching American TV programs. I still remember the first American TV series I watched- "Gossip Girl" Leave the corny plot aside, I have to admit the eye candies and the fancy clothes in that TV program are still commendable. The wholly different world in American TV programs drove my desire to learn English culture even further.

　　Meanwhile, I started writing short English diaries. At the beginning, the content was monotonous and filled with mistakes regarding to grammar and lexical collocation. However, gradually, it became obvious that there was more I could talk about in English, at a superficial level, though.

　　Certainly, I didn't discard the habit of reading. At that time, the English materials I read were not limited to magazines any more. I also read English novels and newspapers. It took me ages to actually finish reading an English fiction. Then and there, I didn't have a clear idea about how much I could benefit from merely reading.

　　Besides the aforementioned, I had some lessons in English training centers. To cater to the needs of Chinese students, most of English training schools put up attractive slogans like "Help you master English in a month" or " Guarantee high scores in certain English tests". They are apparently big fat lies. Admittedly, teachers do play a significant role in students' English learning. But, it is the students not teachers who decide the outcome. If students didn't make efforts and didn't show perseverance, it would not work no matter how excellent the teacher is.

　　Later, the more I realized that I could learn a lot from self-studying, the more class I cut. I did what I then considered as right, which was not recommendable as I am pretty sure attending lectures is beneficial.

　　After I graduated from my university, on the whole, my English was OK. Even though my speaking had been improved a lot, my writing was still terrible. Honestly, during the first six months of working, I was resting on my laurels which soon were no enough to meet the requirements of my job. So I had to do more English reading, writing and speaking.

　　Even after I came to Australia, I had to spare a great deal of time to hone my language skills. Even though being abroad afforded me an authentic language environment, my English sort of reached a plateau. That was because talking to acquaintances or not-so-close friends didn't help much with my English as the topics we could talk about were limited and the level of our conversations was not deep enough. Therefore, I read English fictions recommended by my friends. The great stories like "Desert Flower" " Handle with Care" deeply touched me. Gradually I tended to write down my reflections concerning those stories. Also, I grew more interest in reading English books or autobiographies. It is reading that helps me finally overcome the plateau and make more progress in English learning.

　　Learning a foreign language is never easy because you are not only learning a language but also its accompanying culture. There are a range of learning strategies you can employ. You should chose the ones that you see fit. But, one thing is for sure, no matter what learning strategy you apply, a determined mind beats everything.